The Last Checks Mom Handed Out at the Lake

Highway 5

Gwen didn’t say anything until we were across the bridge at Gravois Mills and climbing back up toward Versailles. She sat in the back seat behind Mom with the envelope in her lap and her hat beside her.

Then she said, “Tami, can you pull over at the grocery store in Versailles? I can’t say this to the back of anybody’s head.”

I pulled into the lot at the grocery store on the edge of town and parked at the far end, under the one tree. Mom said she needed a few things and went inside. I think she knew.

Gwen and I stood by the back of my car in the heat with the asphalt soft under our shoes.

“I knew,” Gwen said. “I want you to know I knew. Not the whole thing. I didn’t sit down and add it up like you did. But every month the check came, and every month I cashed it, and every month I told myself she had plenty.”

“Why?” I asked. It was the only question I had.

She laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. “Because the house is paid off. Because the pension looked like a lot of money when I was twenty-five and it still looked like a lot of money in my head. Because she offered. Because it was easier than telling Ken we’d bought a lake place we couldn’t afford at the worst possible time to buy one.”

“Ken didn’t know,” I said.

“Ken thought my raise was covering it,” she said. “I didn’t get a raise.” She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. “Sue knew what I knew. We talked about stopping it. We talked about it every single Christmas. And then January would come and we’d say, after the assessment’s paid down. After the loan’s refinanced. After the rates come back down.”

“Three years, Gwen.”

“I know how long it was.” Her voice cracked. “She cut a coupon for bread. Ken just told me. He said, ‘Your mother is buying bread with coupons and we have a boat.’ He said it right there on the lawn.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d learned that from Dad, and from Mom, and from twenty years of standing at a pharmacy counter. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is let the other person finish.

“I used to think you stayed in Tipton because you couldn’t do any better,” Gwen said finally. “I’m ashamed of that. You’re the only one of us who saw her. You’re the only one who was looking.”

“I almost didn’t see it,” I said. “She had to ask me about splitting a pill.”

Gwen closed her eyes. “Oh, Tami.”

“She’s fine,” I said. “I wouldn’t let her. She’s fine now.”

Gwen nodded and stood there, and then she said the thing I’ve thought about every day since.

“She wrote ‘I was glad to help,'” she said. “She wrote that. After three years of us letting her. She still wrote that she was glad.”